segunda-feira, 15 de outubro de 2012

Power, Time and Agency‏

Despite time often appearing as an inert background to social life,there has been a wide array of work across a range of disciplinesthat argues that varying understandings and embodied experiences oftime are intimately intertwined with power and agency. JohannesFabian’s diagnosis of a denial of coevalness (or shared time) withinclassical anthropology represents a key example. But his analysis ofthe use of time to distance self from other has been significantlyextended within a variety of critical fields of inquiry includingpost-colonial theory (e.g. Chatterjee, 2001 and Chakrabarty, 2008),queer theory (e.g. Freeman 2010, Halberstam 2005) and feminist theory(e.g. Grosz 2005, Hemmings 2011). These and other areas of work havesought to situate time as a significant component in socialmechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, of social legitimation and insocial responses to perceived threats.

Recognising that particular kinds of time uphold, and seek toenforce, particular kinds of social formations and power relations, arange of what might be called ‘critical temporalities’ have beenproposed, both from within and outside of the academy. The need tothink and live time differently has come to be seen as a necessarypart of the work of challenging particular hegemonic regimes and ofopening up new modes of agency and action. Homi Bhabha’s ‘enunciativepresent’, Barbara Adam’s ‘timescapes’, Dana Luciano’s‘chronobiopolitics’, Jacques Derrida’s ‘time out of joint’, ElizabethFreeman’s ‘chrononormativity’ and Deborah Bird Rose’s ‘multispeciesknots of ethical time’, as well as social movements such asCittaslow, Voluntary Simplicity, the Long Now Foundation andTransition Towns, all problematise and rework traditional Westernallegiances to a supposedly progressive, all-encompassing lineartime. The role of ‘critical temporalities’ is thus complicated andwide-ranging, bringing multiple disciplines into proximity around ashared concern with the role of time in the workings of power and thepossibilities of agency.

The aim of this workshop then is to draw together thesemulti-disciplinary attempts to challenge and rethink time in order toprovide participants with the opportunity to explore potentialoverlaps, dissonances and opportunities for cross-disciplinaryconversation. How might queer temporalities and the temporalities ofpost-colonialism speak to or challenge each other? Could the time offeminist visions of heterogeneous community provide insights into howto think multi-species communities? Might movements like Cittaslowand the Long Now federation that challenge the accelerating, and yetnarrow, time of neoliberalism be further challenged or extended byindigenous critiques of the temporalities of internationaldevelopment agencies?

We are thus inviting applications from those researching the linksbetween time, power and agency from across the humanities and socialsciences who would be interested in thinking with the broad spectrumof critical temporalities. We are also inviting applications fromthose working within community organisations, government or policywho would like to explore how questions about time, power and agency,arise within their work.

Format of the workshop

The residential workshop will include around 40 participants and willtake place over two days at the University of Manchester’s conferenceand hotel facility; Chancellors. In order to explore the breadth ofapproaches, and support new collaborations, the workshop will includea variety of session formats. Along with a small number of longerinvited papers, there will be standard sessions of 15 minutes papers,as well as themed sessions of lightning talks or Pecha Kuchapresentations followed by discussions. There will also becollaborative, participant-driven sessions where themes emerging fromthe paper sessions can be synthesised and explored in greater depth.

Suggested Themes

Presenters are welcome to approach the theme in the way they think ismost thought-provoking, although we have suggested possible topicsbelow.

- Time and Power:Articulating and/or critiquing the variety of ways concepts of timeare used to include and/or exclude | Time as a means to createdistance and hierarchy | Using different mobilisations of time tolegitimate power relations (e.g. how might mobilisations of class andclass privilege be supported or undermined by time use, conceptionsof the future or understandings of the temporalities of action?) |The denial or assertion of coevalness for political or ethical ends,for example causes or peoples being dismissed as anachronistic,asynchronous, or timeless | Inter-relations between alternativeconcepts of power and alternative concepts of time?

- Organising Time:Explorations of conflicts between different senses or modes of time,within bureaucracy, between conservationists and policy makers,between activist organisations, between evolutionary time scales andneoliberal speeds of production, etc. | Challenging/transformingnormative life-course narratives | Learned time codes, learningthrough such codes what is valued and what is not…

- Critical Temporalities:Counter-stories, counter-temporalities| the temporalities ofresistance to neo-liberalism? | Critical analyses of the use ofnon-linear accounts of time for seeking to adequately respond topluralism, non-homogeneous communities etc | Actively seeking toextend sense of time beyond usual frameworks to connect issues,groups, peoples usually thought to be separate form each other

- Time and Agency:Rethinking the link between senses of agency and a sense of futurity| Thinking time differently in order to open up differentpossibilities of action, concepts of agency and/or future visions |Exploring the continued potential of the past for marginalised groupsthrough notions such as ‘what might have been’, the ‘not yet’, the‘to come’.

- Conceptualising/ Experiencing Time:Temporalities of diaspora and migration | Challenging the hegemony of‘progress’ as a justification for action | Challenging who or whatrepresents the future, be it the West in general, children, men,science, culture etc. | Critiques of exclusions/ inclusions producedthrough periodisation | Time poverty and responses such as slow food,slow cities and voluntary simplicity. | How might conceptualisationsof community be produced through, or perpetuated by particular usesof time? For example, examinations of the link between presence andcommunity, or techniques of distancing community into an idealisedpast free of conflict

Costs

There is a fee of £60 for this workshop. However, as the workshop hasbeen funded generously by the AHRC this includes all workshop fees,accommodation costs and workshop dinner costs.